United celebrate title with their feet up

By Colin Malam

7:49PM BST 14 Apr 2001

SKY'S eagerness to have an exclusive view of Manchester United winning the Premiership title yet again resulted in complete anti-climax yesterday. Like the record crowd of 67,637 at Old Trafford, the television company's cameras had packed up and gone home from United's 4-2 midday victory over Coventry by the time Arsenal's unexpected 3-0 home defeat by Middlesbrough in the afternoon ensured that the Manchester club would end the season as champions once more.

Sky had chosen to screen the game at Old Trafford in anticipation of its being the climax to the Premiership title race. But, just in case they were wrong, they had also earmarked next Saturday's Manchester derby for a midday kick-off. The United faithful will doubtless relish taunting City then with the latest proof of their long-standing superiority, but they would have preferred almost certainly to have celebrated the triumph as it happened.

In the end, the frustrated United fans, many of whom had hung around waiting for the result from Highbury, were reduced to voicing their joy outside a deserted Old Trafford last night. But at least Sky made some amends by getting hold of United manager Sir Alex Ferguson and bringing his thoughts on the triumph to the nation last evening.

"It's all the sweeter," he said, "because this is the hardest league in the world to win. I didn't expect the Arsenal result at all, but I've got a few friends down from Scotland, and when we heard the score at half-time [2-0 to Midlesbrough] we decided to stay and listen to the rest of the game.

"It's a fantastic achievement and I'm very proud of the players. This is the kind of boost we can take into the game in Munich on Wednesday and get the right result for the country. I think we can get three clubs into the semi-finals of the Champions League."

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Earlier, the United faithful had had to endure a close-run thing. Coventry, fighting for Premiership survival and going bravely for a third successive win, went in at the interval holding United at 2-2. It was not until the last nine minutes that Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes scored the goals that guaranteed the reigning champions three points and underlined the resilience that, just as much as skill and class, has been responsible for their eight-year domination of English football.

But it was a victory in a vacuum until Middlesbrough, another side trying to claw their way to safety at the bottom, inflicted the first home Premiership defeat of the season on Arsenal, the only team capable of catching United.

There is no doubt that being crowned English champions once more, albeit rather messily, will provide United with a timely boost when they go to Bayern Munich trailing 1-0 from the first leg and seeking the win they need to reach the semi-finals of the Champions League. As United's Dutch international centre-back, Jaap Stam, admitted yesterday, losing to Real Madrid in last season's quarter-finals took the shine off winning the Premiership title.

Indeed, a strange dichotomy has started to develop between United's mastery of their domestic rivals and the difficulty they have experienced overcoming the very best European sides in the past two seasons. Searching for an explanation of the mystery, Ferguson has suggested that the failure of the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool, Leeds and Chelsea to stretch his team may have taken the edge off their play in the Champions League.

Nonetheless, Ferguson is entitled to be immensely proud of what he has achieved since taking over at Old Trafford in 1986. It took him five years to win anything, the now defunct European Cup-Winners' Cup, but since the Premier League was established in 1992-93, United have carried off the title seven times in nine seasons. Only Blackburn and Arsenal have broken that remarkable sequence.

The ease with which United won this, their third title in a row, is exemplified by the fact that they went 11 points clear of the pack when they beat West Ham 3-1 at Old Trafford on New Year's Day.

A major factor in United's racing start to the season was the form of Teddy Sheringham, famous along with another substitute, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, for winning the European Cup in those dramatic last few minutes against Bayern two seasons ago. Sheringham has scored 20 goals so far and the bulk of them came before Christmas.

Although Sheringham's form has dipped, and his goals have dried up, of late, the value of his contribution to the present cause has not been lost on the United fans. At the halfway stage in the voting for `The Sir Matt Busby Player of the Season 2000-2001' Sheringham is leading by a street from Ryan Giggs, David Beckham and Roy Keane.